Jeff at ProteinWisdom.com often makes note of things like this; it's a case of "resignifying," or allowing the aggrieved listener to redefine the word to his/her (dis)liking and then condemn the speaker for the reinterpreted meaning. Other examples: College professors condemned for using the word "n***ardly," because students erroneously interpreted it as being derived from a racial slur.

"A local spokesman for the US-based Westaff recruitment firm said it was "misleading" to say the company had banned Santa's traditional greeting and it was being left up to the discretion of the individual Santa himself."

What is that supposed to mean??? There's more than ONE Santa Claus?????

Honestly, Santa (or the Weihnachtsmann, as we call him - meaning Christmasman, not very creative, I know) does not say such things, probably because the far left students in the 60s were usually calling "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh" on their protest walks....

I've said it before, political correctness is going to kill our society.

You said a mouth full. It seems everyone has their heart on their sleeve and are just looking for ways to be offended. Nearly every day I see a case or article were someone is offended by what someone has says ... not that I would ever offend anyone.

If you don't like what someone says ignore it. Political correctness has to many rules for me to keep up with.

One group can say one thing about something and it's ok.Another group says the exact same thing and it's racism or not PC.It's all insane.

Well said good sirs. I'm not quite sure why changing the way we say something(example, calling "midgets" "little people") is going to matter. No matter how you cut it, its simply a "nicer" way to call someone "different". Either we all get called "human" or simply accept what society calls you.

For this example, I saw also somewhere that they wanted Santa to "slim down" because a "fat" Santa is not something to look up to. I think all of this BS started with the whole "Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas" thing. For example, someone thought saying "Merry Christmas" to the Jewish is somehow offensive.

Why do people who complain about things not being PC remind me of college kids who protest anything just to have a voice?

Wow, what is REALLY shocking about this to me is that now the PC police are being driven by slangs and mispronunciations of real words. Slang is often (and is here) very regional or subculture specific, so once again, we see a 'minority' dictating for the majority.

That's the whole point of PC, in my view: that a few can socially 'govern' the many.

Anybody want to read a good book on PC and it's cousins should check out Dinesh Desousa's book Illiberal Education. It's dated (uses mid-late 1980's data and anecdotes), but he may have written others since.

It's funny, because they were planning on having the Santas saying "ha ha ha" instead. Horrible isn't it?

Anyways, I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about how all the American producers were making 'Love, Peace and Happy Holidays" material for christmas, and it was almost impossible to get anything that said "Merry Christmas" etc etc.

Andrew, do these friends decorate or hide eggs with their children? Even if they don't take part in the non-Christian parts of the holiday, why chastise you for saying that, just let it roll off their back unless someone's being a jerk about it.

There's a woman who works the check out line at the Wal-Mart I go to, she apparently wishes, "Have a blessed day," to customers as they leave. I'm an atheist, I don't believe in blessings, but it does me no harm if this is the woman's way of wishing people well. I'm not going to point this out to her, or tell her to keep her blessings to herself. Now if she were to somehow find out and try to belligerently witness to me every time I went through her line, that would be different.

I exchange presents with people, so "Merry Christmas" doesn't bother me, but "Happy Holidays" is fine too since I know there are other holidays going on then also. I embrace some traditions I enjoy (I enjoy getting together with friends and family and it feels good to give gifts to people you care about or who need help, getting stuff can be nice too, just don't be greedy about it) but ignore others. People on both sides of these "War on Christmas" flareups need to chill out.

Back to the Santa mess, it's funny that the people wanting to get rid of "ho ho ho" are assuming that the first thing to pop into someone's mind is the slang for "whore", not the original jolly laugh or say a garden implement. What does that say about what's going on in their heads. Next some overly sensitive parent will claim that "ha ha ha" is making their kid think that Santa is mocking them.

Getting worked up over whether the fictional personification of holiday gift giving is too fat? Blame the old Coca-Cola ads that helped shape the modern image of Santa; blame the author of "Twas the Night Before Christmas". Maybe we should make St. Nick skinny again to keep the holiday the way our ancestors did, and we can bring back Black Peter too. Or we can get the hell over caring about what the correct BMI for this figment of our imagination should be anyway.

Andrew, do these friends decorate or hide eggs with their children? Even if they don't take part in the non-Christian parts of the holiday, why chastise you for saying that, just let it roll off their back unless someone's being a jerk about it.

I should explain further. The person berating me is my wife and the friends are Gary and Tara, who are similar to me in humor, so they just laugh about it too. When I have run into someone who had a rude issue with me saying "Happy Easter" or "Merry Christmas," I just change my tack after they disagree and usually say something like, "Happy day-that-means-nothing-to-you. Is that better?" I cannot remember the conversation every going beyond that point.

Generally, I cannot remember ever having a problem with someone wishing me a happy holiday that is from a religion or culture that I do not observe. Now, if someone said, "May the great Lucifer visit your house and cavort tomorrow on Hell's Eve." I might express concern.

Yes, I've got at least one Jewish friend who will observe the high holy days but also eat ham.

Jewishness is both an ethnicity and a religion, so someone like Sammy Davis Jr. could be a Jew via religion, but not ethnically a Jew.

It's funny, both my sister and our (now late) cousin both married Jewish men and converted, so the children will be thought of as Jewish. Then I have a Jewish friend who's sister married a (IIRC) Baptist, and she also converted.